West Virginia Kroger workers reject sellout agreement, vote overwhelmingly to strike

Zac Thorton



https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/12/krog-n12.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws




In West Virginia, workers for the grocery and retail giant, Kroger, have resoundingly rejected a pro-company sellout agreement which sought to impose higher health care costs and eliminate or reduce certain benefits for senior employees. In addition, workers have signaled their determination to defend their interests by voting overwhelmingly for strike action.

The proposed contract, which covers the Charleston-area Kroger stores, was rejected 1,551–130. The current contract, which was ratified in 2017, expired on August 29, but has been extended indefinitely while the company and the union continue to negotiate.

Under the proposed agreement, Kroger would place a cap on the amount of money it contributes to health care benefits, placing more of the burden on its employees. Beginning in 2021, this cap would be 10 percent, and by 2023 it would be lowered to 8 percent.

According to the Herald-Dispatch, Paula Ginnett, president of Kroger’s Mid-Atlantic division which oversees West Virginia, said that the proposal “included a $20 million wage investment that would allow associates to grow their hourly pay. Some associates, she said, could improve their rate by up to $4.65 per hour depending upon their position during the life of the next contract.” The reality is that the company’s increased pay offering will hardly alter the fact that Kroger workers receive poverty wages.

For the average full-time Kroger worker, the current contract lists starting pay as a meager $8.75 per hour, with increases every six months, capping out at $15.26 after 72 months. Under the proposed agreement, pay increases would take place on a yearly basis (referred to in the contract as “levels” numbering 1–4, with 4 being the maximum). For new hires on or after Nov. 1, 2020, starting pay would be $10 per hour. By 2023, a level 4 worker will cap out at $15 per hour. If they are “red circled,” they will cap out at $16.16 per hour. In the end, these small pay increases will be unable to offset the increased health care costs.

The move by Kroger to increase health care costs for its workers, under conditions of a global pandemic which has claimed the lives of over 230,000 people in the US alone, is an outright provocation. To date, West Virginia has over 30,000 total cases and 553 deaths. Now with the reopening of schools and the continuous erosion of basic safety measures, cases in the state have begun to surge.

Kanawha County, where Charleston, the state capital and largest city is located, accounts for the majority of the state’s cases, with over 4,000, and the highest total deaths with 117. Nearby Logan County has the second highest, with 48 deaths.

The union representing West Virginia Kroger workers is the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 400. Fearing an explosion of working class anger in response to the company’s efforts to attack workers’ living standards, the union was forced to hold a strike authorization vote in order to save face in the eyes of its membership, as well as to buy more time to conspire with the company on a new sellout agreement.

Despite workers voting 1,490–199 in favor of strike action, the union will do everything possible to avoid a strike. This was pointed out by Kroger Mid-Atlantic Corporate Affairs Manager Allison McGee, who said, “Associates are continuing to report to work as scheduled. A strike authorization doesn’t mean a strike. At this point, the union has not called for a work stoppage.”

The World Socialist Web Site recently spoke to James, a worker in Virginia for the supermarket chain Giant, who is also a member of UFCW Local 400. James was angered by the effort to attack Kroger workers’ health care, commenting, “They [Kroger] can afford anything. It’s had record profits during the pandemic.”

James stated that, after having his hazard pay eliminated while the pandemic still raged, he and other employees had received a mere $150 “bonus” from the corporation. “Even this was taxed,” he said, noting that when all was said and done, he only received $108. “Now they want to come after [workers’] health care? F––– that! We should all be on strike over this outrageous attack.”

The WSWS also spoke with a Kroger worker in Nashville, Tennessee. He remarked, “It’s awful, however, it isn’t surprising. Kroger isn’t known for its compassion, at least not among its employees. Some companies try to be profitable by making their employees proud to work for them (or so I’ve heard). Kroger is more thuggish about it, for lack of a better word.”

In order to defend their interests, the workers in West Virginia must take matters out of the hands of the pro-company UFCW and into their own. Throughout the pandemic, the union has done nothing to safeguard the lives of grocery workers, who, as genuinely essential workers, have been forced to remain on the job throughout the pandemic. It was not until the workers themselves started to take action that the companies began providing personal protective equipment and sanitation products. The Socialist Equality Party encourages all workers to form independent rank-and-file safety committees to protect their lives and defend their interests.

Republicans TERRIFIED Bernie Sanders Could chair Budget Committee if they lose Georgia runoffs

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=incGQIrHGkE&ab_channel=ChristoAivalis

Thousands protest in Peru against impeachment, pandemic and economic implosion

Rafael Azul




https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/12/peru-n12.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws




Wednesday was the third day of mass protests across Peru. Thousands mobilized in protests against the political, economic and health crises racking this South American country. The demonstrators were met with water cannon and police repression.

On Monday, November 9, Peru’s Congress removed President Martín Vizcarra from office. The next day Vizcarra was replaced by Manuel Merino, president of the Congress. Demonstrations took place in various cities in opposition to Vizcarra’s ouster. As president until elections are held on April 11, 2021, Merino is also continuing to preside over congress.

Merino is the third president in the span of one presidential term; Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, Vizcarra’s predecessor, was elected in 2016.

Merino defended the congressional action, defining it as a “process of democratic transition” to defend the Peruvian nation and declaring that the assembly’s votes “were not purchased” and followed due process.

Vizcarra had been impeached for “permanent moral incapacity.” It was alleged that he had received bribes connected to construction projects in 2011-2014, when Vizcarra was governor of the southern province of Moquegua. The accusations are based upon plea bargains by other defendants, without any trial or even investigation having taken place.

Vizcarra’s removal resulted from the legislature’s second impeachment attempt. An impeachment attempt two months ago, allegedly for “influence peddling,” did not obtain the required two-thirds vote of the legislature.

The US State Department indicated that US officials were “following events closely.”

“We look to Peruvian institutions to uphold the constitution and the rule of law,” a spokesman declared. “We note that national elections are scheduled for April. As a region of democracy and prosperity, we call on Peruvians to continue to pursue their political ends via a peaceful, lawful, democratic process.”

Ironically and hypocritically, the statement came on the same day that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told a State Department news conference that there would be a “smooth transition to a second Trump administration,” backing the attempt by the White House to overturn the results of the US presidential elections.

The State Department’s declaration had more to do with its desire to quell the popular reaction to Vizcarra’s removal than with any genuine defense of the democratic process.

In Lima, Peru’s capital, the decision to replace Vizcarra with Merino brought many people into the streets. On Monday night and Tuesday, crowds marched and rallied to protest the Merino’s appointment. A Tuesday protest march along the streets of downtown Lima was blocked from reaching the Congress building. In the course of ten hours of protests, dozens were arrested and several were injured by the police.

Protests are also taking place in the cities of Ayacucho, Cusco, Trujillo, Piura and Iquitos, centers of mining and industry.

While Vizcarra has denied all the accusations against him, political corruption has been endemic in Peru’s ruling elites. Vizcarra himself became president upon the resignation of President Kuczynski because of corruption charges in March 2018 involving the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht. Nearly every living Peruvian ex-president has been implicated in corruption probes.

Vizcarra’s removal was carried out by all the political parties represented in the legislature. Sixty-eight out of those who voted (out of 130 legislators) have themselves been accused of corrupt practices and are barred from running again for office.

Vizcarra’s removal and the appointment of Merino have taken place in the context of a deepening social and economic crisis. In addition to its government being racked by accusations of corruption, Peru is an epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the highest per capita COVID-19 mortality rate in the Americas.

While the Peruvian politicians continue to enrich themselves through service to the country’s financial oligarchy and foreign capital, Peru implodes. By August of this year, Peru’s gross domestic product had declined 30 percent; unemployment is 40 percent higher than in 2019. Many companies have declared bankruptcy and Peru’s economy has yet to bottom out.

Tourism has contracted by 90 percent, construction by 67 percent and mining by 37 percent.

Like his predecessor, Vizcarra ruled as an enemy of the working class and agent of the mining cartels. In June, following three months of lockdown, without having stopped the coronavirus and under pressure from the ruling class, Vizcarra opened the economy, with devastating effects. Hospitals have run out of resources; the rate of new cases and deaths continues to accelerate. A regime headed by Merino will only deepen the attacks on the Peruvian working class.

Metro Detroit hospitalizations rise sharply as second wave of COVID-19 cases surges across Michigan

Kevin Reed




https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/12/mich-n12.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws




Hospitalizations of people infected with COVID-19 in the Detroit metropolitan area increased dramatically last weekend as a second wave of the pandemic surged across Michigan and dwarfed the case numbers of last spring.

A report in Bridge Magazine on Monday said that hospitals “in metro Detroit’s six counties are treating over 1,300 patients, up 200 from Friday alone.” Among the hospital systems facing the COVID-19 surge are Beaumont Health, which has experienced an increase in cases from 172 on Oct. 25 to 377 on Sunday, the report said.

Dr. Nick Gilpin, Beaumont Health’s director of infection prevention epidemiology, said, “We’ve had a notable rise in COVID-19 cases in metro Detroit. Community positivity rates have jumped to 8–11 percent in the area.”

The number of daily coronavirus cases in Michigan reached 6,473 on Wednesday, which is more than three times greater than the peak of 1,953 last April during the early days of the pandemic. There have been a total of 217,000 confirmed cases and 7,600 deaths from the pandemic in Michigan.

According to data maintained by the state of Michigan, the major hospitals in metro Detroit, including Ascension Health, Beaumont Health, Detroit Medical Center, Henry Ford Health System, McLaren Health, Michigan Medicine and Trinity Health, all had bed occupancy of between 75 percent and 85 percent as of Wednesday. These seven hospital networks have a total of 1,670 COVID-19 cases, with 340 patients in intensive care.

The surge in cases and hospitalizations has forced many hospitals to restrict visitor access. Henry Ford Health System issued a statement on Tuesday saying that, while the hospital “recognizes the importance of the support by loved ones during a patient’s hospitalization,” the decision to restrict visitation and limit family presence is based on “the health and safety of our patients, our team members and others in our facilities.”

Dave Coulter, executive of Oakland County, a suburban county north of Detroit, said during a live Facebook event on Tuesday, “Over the weekend our seven-day average for confirmed cases spiked to over 400 per day for the first time. That’s a pace of over 2,800 COVID-19 cases per week.”

Hospitalizations across the state of Michigan have quadrupled since Oct. 1. Ruthanne Sudderth, spokeswoman for the Michigan Health and Hospital Association, told Bridge Magazine, “We are getting close to a point where people won’t be able to get care for COVID” or other health issues.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) renewed contracts on Oct. 1 with Suburban Collection shopping mall in Novi and TCF Convention Center in downtown Detroit to be used as backup emergency hospital bed facilities. Lynn Sutfin, spokesperson for MDHHS, said, “We hope that additional hospitalization space isn’t needed, but we are incredibly concerned about the increasing cases and hospitalizations.”

Sutfin added, “Although our hospitalizations are not what they were during the spring surge, over half of COVID-19 inpatients are outside of Southeast Michigan. We are concerned about what may happen if hospitals become overwhelmed.”

According to a report in the Detroit Free Press, the Michigan health care system is not prepared for the surge in cases. Hospital medical executives warn that the systems do not have adequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) or staffing—especially nurses and respiratory specialists—to handle a surge that lasts for a prolonged period.

Dr. Lydia Watson, senior vice president and chief medical officer of MidMichigan Health, which has medical centers in Alpena, Clare, Gladwin, Gratiot, Midland, Mount Pleasant and West Branch, said, “We currently have adequate supplies—anywhere from seven to 30 days of everything that we need.” Watson warned that if there is a significant increase in patient loads, this might not be enough.

Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer told news media on Tuesday that her administration was investigating “next steps” to combat the surge that has been building since mid-June and took off exponentially at the beginning of October. The governor said she was “having ongoing regular conversations” with MDHHS about how to handle the increase.

In early October, the Michigan Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a law that the governor had used to issue previous stay-at-home orders and other executive declarations pertaining to the pandemic. Whitmer has since used the authorities of MDHSS to implement measures such as a new mask mandate, but the Republican-controlled legislature is continuing to obstruct such rules.

While the Democrats are presenting the present surge as the singular product of the reduction of gubernatorial executive authority, the fact is that both the Democrats and Republicans in Michigan have worked together to ensure that the economy was reopened despite the ongoing and grave threat posed to public health. Both parties have supported the drive by employers to force workers back into the factories and workplaces and to get schoolchildren back into the schools.

As reported on the World Socialist Web Site yesterday, a wide-ranging cover-up of new infections has been underway in the auto industry as demonstrated at the FCA Sterling Heights Stamping Plant (SSP). In the first ten days of November, there have been nearly the same number of infections of auto workers at SSP as all of October. While at least 22 FCA workers have died from COVID-19 since production was resumed in May, the company has not reported anything to workers since the end of June.

As has been the case throughout the pandemic, the working class and poorest sections of the population have borne the brunt of the social and economic impact of COVID-19. For example, the overall health of workers in Detroit—including an epidemic of underlying conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and other respiratory ailments that compromise the immune system—combined with a lack of access to adequate health care services, effectively turns an infection with coronavirus into a death sentence.

A report in Bloomberg Businessweek on Oct. 21 revealed the fact that the working class population in an area in southwest Detroit, near the zip code 48217, has been poisoned by industrial pollution for decades. The article states, “People in 48217 live on average seven fewer years than in the country as a whole, and asthma hospitalization rates in the area are more than twice as high as those of Michigan and about five times higher than those of the US.”

The residential area, where 40 percent of the population lives in poverty, is in very close proximity to two dozen major industrial sites including “mills run by U.S. Steel and the mining company Cleveland-Cliffs, as well as DTE Energy’s River Rouge coal-fired power station, a Great Lakes Water Authority treatment facility, an oil refinery, a drywall manufacturer, a salt pile, a lime quarry, three scrap-metal processors, a chemical plant, four concrete suppliers, an asphalt maker, Ford’s River Rouge production facility.”

Although Bloomberg attempts to present the impact of these conditions on the health of the working class as a race issue—one of the neighborhoods is 80 percent African American—the reality is that this area of the city is one of most ethnically integrated in all of Detroit.

Medical experts are coming to the conclusion that long-term exposure to air pollution makes it very difficult for the immune system to fight off the coronavirus infection of the respiratory system. Bloomberg quotes Francesca Dominici, a professor of biostatistics at Harvard, who published an article showing that death rates from COVID-19 are connected with even modest increases in long-term pollution exposure.

Dominici said, “If you live in a community where you’ve been exposed to all kinds of toxicants and air pollutants, we know that your lungs have been inflamed for a very long time before, and if you contract the virus, your ability to respond to the virus is compromised.”

Krystal Ball Interview: Democrats' Gaslighting Should Be Met With More Primary Challenges

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ6GAvL7WLM&ab_channel=StatusCoup

North Dakota reaches 100 percent hospital capacity, tells health care workers to continue working if infected with COVID-19

Alex Findijs



https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/12/ndcv-n12.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws




The Governor of North Dakota, Republican Doug Burgum, announced during a news conference on Monday that hospitals have reached 100 percent capacity across the state due to the rapid spike in cases of COVID-19.

North Dakota has become the epicenter of the outbreaks occurring in the Midwest, with daily cases breaching 1,000 last week and active cases reaching 11,719 on November 10. Over 1.5 percent of the entire state population is currently infected with the virus.

Total cases have surpassed 56,000 and total deaths are closing in 700, twice the number of one month ago. Of the 30 COVID-related deaths on Monday, a third were from the Bismarck area. And in Ward County, which has seen 83 deaths in total, two-thirds have come in just the last two weeks.

The rapid rise in cases across the state has put the health care system on the brink of collapse. As of November 10, there are 383 patients hospitalized for COVID-19, with 48 of them in the intensive care unit. With 20 percent of all hospital beds filled by coronavirus patients, North Dakota hospitals are filled to capacity and face a shortage of staff.

In a desperate bid to avoid staff shortages amidst the crisis, the North Dakota government has issued an order that allows nurses who have tested positive for the virus to continue working if they exhibit an asymptomatic condition.

This decision came at the request of hospital administrators, who are terrified by the prospect of losing staff during a dire health emergency which is growing worse by the day.

The extreme decision is recommended by the Strategies to Mitigate Healthcare Personnel Staffing Shortages update on July 17, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Allowing sick nurses to work is considered a “crisis capacity strategy” for workers who are “well enough and willing,” and is considered a last-ditch effort to maintain adequate staffing, highlighting the severity of the situation in North Dakota

In order to prevent transmission by infected health care personnel, the CDC recommends that they be given the opportunity to conduct telework first. If conditions require them to work on site then they should only interact with infected patients and should be prohibited from contact with immunocompromised patients. CDC guidelines recommend that infected health care workers should only interact with infected patients if necessary, and working with non-infected patients is a “last resort.”

The CDC also notes that infected health care workers can still transmit the virus to coworkers, and provisions should be made to distance infected workers from other staff. This is will be a difficult task for hospitals and it is likely that infected workers will transmit the virus to their coworkers even with precautionary measures taken.

North Dakota has progressed to the stage of allowing infected workers to care for infected patients in hospitals and nursing homes already.

Regardless of whether keeping infected workers on the job can be done safely, it is clear that the necessity to do so is the product of negligent health policies pursued by Governor Burgum.

The first-term Republican governor has refused to issue a mask mandate for the state, opting instead to merely encourage residents to wear them. The developing crisis has since tempered Burgum’s opposition to mask requirements somewhat, with the governor saying he was open to allowing local ordinances on the issue.

The urban centers of Bismarck, Grand Forks, Williston and Fargo have passed local mask mandates in response to the pandemic, but most of the mask mandates around the state carry no punishment for failing to comply.

The most that Burgum has done was raising the risk level in all North Dakota counties to “high risk.” This comes with recommendations that all restaurants, bars and event venues operate at 25 percent capacity. Throughout the entire pandemic Burgum has never once raised a risk level to “critical,” which would require the closure of businesses and a mandatory stay-at-home order.

Burgum is clearly toeing the line of President Donald Trump, who has consistently lied about the danger of the pandemic and promoted the policy of “herd immunity” which places profit over lives. He has contradicted the scientific work of the CDC, claiming that “shutting down the economy doesn’t necessarily slow the spread” of the virus.

This is of course false.

A recent study published by the CDC on the lockdown in Italy concluded that the lockdown was instrumental in bringing the virus under control.

On the question of herd immunity, the World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that “attempts to reach ‘herd immunity’ through exposing people to a virus are scientifically problematic and unethical. Letting COVID-19 spread through populations, of any age or health status will lead to unnecessary infections, suffering and death.”

The positivity rate in North Dakota is currently around 19 percent, indicating uncontrolled spread and a severe lack of testing. If nothing is done to stop the spread of the virus now, North Dakota, a state of just 760,000 people, may see tens of thousands more fall ill, and thousands die.

The policies of the North Dakota government, in the face of full hospital capacity and continuously rising cases, are a clear sign that the state government is placing profits over people, and that the policy of herd immunity has no scientific validity.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLWVlz783Dk&ab_channel=StatusCoup